Professor Yukio Hayakawa of Gunma University Is Under Attack (Video)

He was reprimanded by the university president for his “insensitive and inappropriate” remarks about “disaster victims” in Fukushima on his Twitter and blog, and is threatened with “disciplinary measures” that include termination from his position.

There are four types of “disciplinary measures” for public employees like Hayakawa: termination, suspension without pay, pay cut, and reprimand. He already got the last one.

He is the one who put out the radiation contour map from the very early days of the disaster. He is very much politically incorrect, not afraid to say things as they are.

Professor Hayakawa tweeted the entire reprimand live, after warning the university that he was tweeting live.

Hayakawa decided to hold a press conference this afternoon (December 8), changed his mind and decided to have an open lecture instead and booked the classroom. The school disallowed his booking, because the reservation didn’t go through the proper channel. So he decided to have an open house in his office.

Then the head of the department came and forbid him to have an open house in his own office, but somehow that must have gotten resolved, and Professor is speaking with the media.

Tokyo Shinbun, Kyodo News, Yomiuri, TBS, and IWJ (Yasumi Iwakami) are there right now, live on USTREAM, here.

… these are not “dosimeters” but “glass badges” that passively collect radiation information. It won’t help these children or their parents to avoid high-radiation areas and spots, it won’t tell them how much radiation they will have been exposed unless they are sent in to a company to interpret the data.

Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Yo: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose: That’s right. When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children. Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air. Their instruments don’t eat. What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material.

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility):

You’ve bought the propaganda from the nuclear industry. They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative … that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days.”